Catalyst (II)

Cyril lifted his blade and angled it at the haughty flame magician. "I don't care who you are or what family you're from; I'm not handing anything over to you. Only two requests for reinforcements were issued from this place, one was from a secure Longinus channel, and the other came from that terrorist over there. I find it a bit hard to believe that someone like you, a hunter, is responding to a distress signal like that on your own."

In a display of pure acquiescence, Marcel's shoulders slumped after hearing Cyril's words. He stepped forward again, this time with a renewed sense of purpose, conveyed by the slow shake of his head.

"Fine. Have it your way."

By the time the words left his lips, Cyril's instincts were already in overdrive, screaming at him to move. He didn't even think—he just shoved Watson aside and dove in the opposite direction. The only thing his eyes managed to catch was an orange flash of light hurtling toward the spot he'd just vacated.

It streaked past with a low whoosh before slamming into a stack of containers with a terrific boom, toppling the entire thing on impact. The Longinus agents scattered from the blow, flung aside by the mere shockwave from the blast, much like the other containers that had begun rattling, if not outright tumbling from the attack.

"Tch, I knew this guy was going to be bad news," Cyril muttered, bracing himself as he pushed off the ground. "Looks like you were in a hurry after all."

"I warned you not to test my patience." Marcel's voice rasped like a fire catching wind. "I'm not going to hold back. This doesn't end until I've torched every last one of you traitors. That's a promise. You're all out of miracles today. The rain won't save you."

His grip tightened around the thick grimoire in his hand. Without uttering a single chant, Marcel calmly extended his hands toward them, summoning a mass of swirling flames that pulsed with deadly intent.

The young phoenix approached wordlessly, each step sending a simmering pulse through the ground as the flaming sphere shifted and condensed around his palm.

"Take your positions! Looks like we're in for another fight!" Watson barked. The Longinus agents—less than ten in number—immediately fanned out, weapons aimed and ready. From submachine guns to anti-tank rifles, every muzzle was trained on the approaching magician.

Watson followed suit, dropping to one knee with his rifle at the ready. The moment he saw Cyril draw his blade from the ground earlier, he had moved without needing orders—securing Victor's body and taking over the task of restraining the man Cyril had already subdued.

Cyril stepped to the front of the formation, separated from Marcel by nothing but a thin curtain of rain. He armed himself with the mithril blade and took a stance. The presence of the Longinus agents at his back didn't offer much comfort, but it was better than nothing. These guys don't stand a chance against him without a Marshal, he thought, tearing his eyes away from the fragile formation. "Looks like there's no way out of this. Alright—Bring it on."

>>>---<<<

Cyril fixed his gaze on his opponent—the red-haired flame magician, now less than a minute away from igniting another blaze.

With that kind of output at his disposal, I doubt this sword will be very effective against his magic, and those MP rounds are as good as useless here. This guy is no joke, his offensive power is off the charts, but it's more of the same—burst casting, a different variation of the same problem. Under these conditions, I can get around it.

Cyril angled his blade squarely at his opponent, who had yet to take any sort of defensive stance whatsoever. Even without the use of proper form, he couldn't seem to find any openings in Marcel's stance simply because of the sheer amount of heat radiating off his body. It vaporized the persistent rain into mere wisps of steam around him, as if the downpour itself was little more than an afterthought to him.

"Watson, I'm going to try and distract that guy. His main objective here is the pod, so in that time I'd like you to get it out of here somehow."

"You intend to fight him by yourself? That's insane." Watson argued, grinding the words through his gritted teeth. "We're sending out another request for aid, we just need to hold him off here and-"

"It's too late for that." Cyril said, cutting him off. "This guy, it really doesn't look like he intends to hold back on us, and if things go his way, then its going to be too hard to prove anything during all this confusion. He can just claim that we were Cocytus members in disguise and make us out to be the bad guys. I know how to handle myself in a fight. Just follow my suggestion if you want to make it out of this alive."

Watson spared a glance at the armed agents around him, unable to argue against the boy's claims. "Damn it!" he cursed, tightening his grip on the rifle in his hands. "Sorry to drop this on you, kid. I owe you one. Our Marshals are all tied up reinforcing the perimeter around the other armories, so there's not much we can do to help. Just make sure you don't die—if you do, that Saint lady's going to give us hell."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Don't turn me into a savior—I'll be lucky to get through this without going up in flames."

Watson turned away shamefully, he called over a few of the stationed agents, intending to relay their strategy, when suddenly, Cyril's instincts screamed again. The mass of bright orange light gathering above Marcel's palm suddenly expanded— alerting his senses as soon as the young Phoenix made his move.

Marcel swung his arm overhead, unleashing a deadly blast of fire into the sky. In terms of its sheer magnitude, the scale of this attack far surpassed his opening move from earlier. As he watched the surge of flames climb higher and higher, Cyril quickly came to realize something—Marcel had never been aiming at them to begin with.

The cone of fire quickly lost its structure as it shot out from his palm and twisted into an erratic spray of flames snaking up into the heavens. The downpour quelled the whirling band of fire almost immediately; and the intense heat caused the moisture to rapidly expand into a thick cloud of steam that was instantly dispersed across the entire container yard.

In a matter of seconds, everything turned white.

For Cyril and the others—who had yet to coordinate a feasible plan—the situation had taken an unexpected turn, possibly the worst outcome. Their senses were immediately thrown into disarray by the descending white shroud, while the sound of rapid vaporization drowned out their voices. A cacophony of hissing noises, screams and confusion filled the area as thick vapors scattered across the yard. The explosive force of the vaporization swept through like a shockwave of scalding wind, rattling metal containers and momentarily cloaking everything in a blinding, searing haze.

That was all it took for their fragile formations to come undone—dismantled all at once by the rush of hot vapors. It was as though their sense of coordination and direction had also been blown away by the shockwave, forever lost within the sea of white.

Gunshots rang out instantly, but they couldn't drown out the furious screams of the shooters as scalding steam seeped through their uniforms, burning them alive. It wasn't uncommon for Longinus agents to travel with night vision equipment, but with hardly any time to assess the situation they couldn't have possibly found a clear shot under the current circumstances.

The first phase of Marcel's attack was successful. He managed to isolate everyone—including Cyril —within a literal fog of uncertainty. Unsure of his or even Watson's location, Cyril did the only thing he could and pulled out his sword, preparing to defend against the next phase of the magician's assault.

There was no time to think, and barely any time to act. Bright orange spheres—each the size of a football—began to appear within the tepid cloud of steam, emerging in clusters of threes. The fireballs swiveled through the air, merging into coordinated groups as they dispersed within the cloud of steam and aligned their trajectories along a near-perfect semicircular arc, all aimed toward Cyril—and the startled Longinus agents cluelessly scattered around him.

The flaming orbs remained stationary for several seconds, and that was when Cyril realized it.

He's using them to search for the pod...!!!

The reason the flaming orbs didn't immediately blast off at random—per the way the spell was clearly meant to function — was simply out of concern for a certain item in the vicinity, the Nephilim's pod. As soon as the mastermind hidden within the haze used the fireballs' glow to catch the light glinting of the pod's translucent glass and gauge its position, the flaming orbs were set loose.

Bolting off like meteors, the orange spheres began crashing into the surroundings at a frightening speed. Cyril dove to the side and broke into a sprint as he charged through the smoke, guided by instinct alone.

The dormant skills in his mind surged to life, priming his reflexes as he charged forward. His thoughts raced, processing the flood of sensory data and steering him clear of danger—armed with nothing more than the vague sense of clarity in his mind, Cyril evaded the deadly impacts at the last possible second as crashes, screams, and thunderous blasts erupted around him, shaking the earth beneath his feet.

It was hard to tell what was happening, one moment he heard screaming, the next he saw charred bodies writhing in the cloud of white fumes. The flaming salvo might have seemed indiscriminate at first glance, but he instantly knew that wasn't the case. There was one area, a single spot in all the turmoil that Marcel wouldn't dare strike, the same area he was heading for.

Tracing the reflective blue glint of the pod's shimmer, he charged into range, desperate to escape the flaming fusillade assaulting them from several directions.

The instant Cyril leaped towards the untouched safe zone, something flashed in his peripheral vision. There was hardly any time to dodge an attack like that, one coming from his blind spot no less, and yet, Cyril evaded the blow without even looking.

He stomped the ground and tilted his head aside, letting the blast—aimed squarely at his skull—swerve along a predetermined arc and vanish into the creeping white shroud enveloping his surroundings.

"Your reflexes are impressive; I'll give you that." Marcel's voice breached the veil; his tone stuck somewhere between amazement and acidity. "I guess even I can mess up sometimes, looks like you did actually learn a few things from that woman."

The silhouette that had been talking down to him from afar became clear. Marcel casually approached him on the steam filled battlefield—grimoire in hand. His relentless barrage of fireballs had died down considerably, but it hadn't gone completely silent yet.

The few agents that were left must have been holding out better than he'd expected.

"You just killed a group of Longinus agents. I'm the least of your problems right now." Cyril said coldly, fixing Marcel with a sharp glare.

His opponent was unfazed.

"Were they really from Longinus?" he joked, shrugging his shoulders. "Under the current circumstances, nobody can tell. I was simply being cautious; this is an urgent situation filled with anomalies. I will purge anyone that I deem to be a nuisance, even if they are too weak to be called a threat. That was the case for them, and it is most certainly the case for you—you're all nuisances, and you will be purged."

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